I have recently purchased a 120GB SSD to install in my desktop. I currently have two 2TB HDDs connected via SATA and an older 500GB HDD connected via PATA. My plan is to wait until 12.04 is released and do a fresh install on the SSD. At that point I have a couple of questions as far as the best practices to set up my existing drives.

1) One of the 2TB HDDs is partitioned with 40GB for / and the remainder as /home. My plan was to partition the SSD with 40GB for / and the remainder for /home. Then I would like to erase the / partition on the HDD (and probably the MBR right?) and recoup that space for storage. I would also like to erase everything except my Video and Music folders on the drive and basically use it only for media storage. Is this possible without losing the data already on the hard drive?

2) Is it possible to have my /home/Music and /home/Videos folders mounted on the HDD rather than the SSD? I would prefer to use the SSD only for the OS and programs, not for media.

2 Answers
2

Clean and simple. Yes, a lot of people run their /home on separate partitions and even separate HDDs. I know, I do.

As far as best practice. SSDs tend to 'wear out' because of read/write or better yet write/erase/write. Any way since the SSD would be used mainly as being read rather than write/erase I would think this is a good move.

Linux OS file systems are not as intrusive as others therefore once the SSD has been written, booting from and running is mostly ALL read files. Saving your /pictures , /documents, /vids and such should be done on the HDD as it can receive a lot of read/write activity and remain operable.